Page 7

By Jack Joseph Smith

Slight enough, just there to be unerved We edge along the ways and sing our song I AM A Bastards from Los Angeles like a Chief Joseph All the crow flys Where the drey air sets down swimming good as a saint Here on the other side The mountains so jagged Have third sleep Sisters and Jack The cattle, a cataclysm, and the black Angus cows below They come back to us By funny truck to think It is velvet but it is not bash Sometimes whiskey as well We all know we are coming home

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page moves through uneasy travel, Los Angeles, Chief Joseph, crow flight, mountains, cattle, a funny truck, velvet, whiskey, and the final certainty that `we are coming home`.

The scan-backed reading turns a noisy OCR page into a clear movement poem. Its handwritten edits keep interrupting the typed route, making homecoming feel improvised and unsettled rather than smooth.

Claude

A homecoming page that fuses coastal exile with native ground - 'I AM A Bastards from Los Angeles like / a Chief Joseph' - then follows the crow's flight 'Where the drey air sets down' toward 'mountains so jagged.' Kin and stock gather in 'Sisters and Jack' and 'the black Angus cows below,' arriving 'By funny truck to think,' and the page closes on the quiet certainty 'We all know we are coming home,' with 'unerved' and 'drey' kept as written. One handwritten mark below the 'not bash' line was left out as uncertain.